The communications industry is rapidly changing to adjust to emerging technologies and ever increasing customer demand. This customer demand for new applications and increased performance of existing applications is driving communications network and system providers to employ networks and systems having greater speed and capacity (e.g., greater bandwidth). In trying to achieve these goals, a common approach taken by many communications providers is to use packet switching technology.
In addition to forwarding of packets, a packet switching device may apply a service to a flow of packets traversing the packet switching device in two directions (e.g., a flow of packets traveling in a first direction from a first host to a second host, and in the reverse direction from the second host to the first host). Examples of such are network address translation and firewall services. The application of these services to each direction of a packet flow depends on common state information. A known packet switching device implements these services on a services card or blade server, and thus, the path of each direction of a flow of packets traversing a packet switch is rerouted through the services card or blade server.